It’s Palm Sunday everyone! Not going to lie, I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to post this Sunday, but then I got it. We’re all at home and some of us have nothing to do, so what’s better than a list of recommended movies and TV shows and other things to do to clear up those quarantine blues and boredom that may be growing?
MOVIES
As far as movies go, here’s a couple of movies I recommend. If you’re not really into chick flicks and rom-coms/comedy and Disney movies, this may not be your list. And if that isn’t the case, maybe this is a list of movies that you consider? I was going for a feel-good, happy, something-to-make-you-laugh bunch of movies with this list, so if that’s something you’re looking for, here are my recommendations:
Clueless
Mean Girls
Miss Congeniality
Police Academy (1, 2, or 3)
Parental Guidance
Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter is Dead
Bad Hair Day
Adventures in Babysitting
Storks
Boss Baby
Wreck-It-Ralph
Ralph Breaks the Internet
Cinderella (live action and animated)
Frozen
Frozen II
TV SHOWS
As far as TV shows go, I was going for a similar, feel-good, pick-me-up vibe for the most part. I’m not really all that big of a TV person, considering that school is typically my entire life, but when I do have time for TV, there are a couple of things I watch. If you’re gonna watch a TV show, binge watching can be a lot of fun, but I’d try to limit it to an episode or two, for health’s sake.
9-1-1
Game of Thrones– definitely NOT a happy show to watch though, heads up
Lego Masters
The Good Place
Schitt’s Creek
Saturday Night Live– I recommend watching older seasons. In my opinion, they were just more funny then.
BOOKS
I’ve been reading a lot more lately, and honestly, I recommend that you all do the same. I’ve always loved reading but school literally sucks up so much of my time and it’s sad how little I’ve read over the past year and a half. This quarantine has given a lot of people so much free time. You are free to do whatever you want with your free time, but I’ve really seen this as an opportunity to develop (or redevelop) some new and more healthy habits, involving less screen time. One of those habits, has been reading, and so I’ll share some of my favorite reads of all time and as of lately that may interest you:
The Selection series by Kiera Cass
The Siren by Kiera Cass
Heartless by Melissa Meyer
The Red Queen series by Victoria Aveyard
The Jewel series by Amy Ewing
The Winner’s Kiss trilogy by Marie Rutkoski
The School for Good and Evil series by Soman Chanani
The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins- she’s making a prequel to the series!!
Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling – these are good movies to watch as well
Unstoppable by Maria Sharapova
Rafa by Rafael Nadal
With All Due Respect by Nikki R. Haley
Driven: A Daughter’s Odyssey by Julie Heldman
And if you’re looking for something else to read, this blog is another option. 🙂 I’ve been posting for the past five years on this blog and I update it every Sunday, so if you’d like to receive email notifications when I post, you can subscribe at the link below! I promise you won’t receive any annoying emails, just notifications for when the next post goes up!
Make of the most of this quarantine and good health and time with family. Most importantly, I hope you are all taking care of yourselves, friends, and family. Despite the fact that I just shared a bunch of books and TV shows and movies for you to enjoy during this quarantine, I encourage you to get outside if you can and get some fresh air and enjoy nature. We all need it. If you feel like you need someone to talk to or want to see your idea as a blog post, you can always reach me on my contact page and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. 🙂 Stay happy and stay healthy. I’ll see you all next week.
Childhood. Oh wow were those the years. My sister and I had a wonderful childhood and looking back on it, I wish that the kids of today had the chance to experience what my sister and I had the chance to live through. From playing outside to movies to toys and also games, I really enjoyed my childhood. Family, of course, made life great too. We spent a lot of time in Farmington, New Mexico with my grandparents and aunt and uncle on my dad’s side. Several of my favorite memories from Farmington include hunting for grasshoppers in my grandparents’ backyard, writing letters to Santa with my aunt, and having tea parties with my grandma. My sister and I grew up without cable TV and so any time we went to our grandparents’ house, we loaded up on our Disney Channel shows, Spongebob, and Animal Planet shows.
When Allyson and I had the chance to watch cable TV, like at our grandparents’ house, we caught up on shows like Phineas and Ferb, Hannah Montana, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, Wizards of Waverly Place, That’s So Raven, Kim Possible, Sonny With a Chance, Shake it Up, Good Luck Charlie, Spongebob (duh), The Replacements, The Powerpuff Girls, Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers, Totally Spies, Fairly Odd Parents, Codename: Kids Next Door, and The Magic School Bus. There’s a lot of shows and that’s probably still not all of them! Off of our good old satellite TV at home, Allyson and I had access to PBS which gave us great shows like Dragon Tales, Clifford, Martha Speaks, Word Girl, Fetch with Ruff Ruffman, Cyberchase, and Arthur. It’s kind of disappointing to see where Disney Channel has gone. The shows just aren’t as good as they used to be! I feel like once Sonny With a Chance (starring Demi Lovato) ended, Disney Channel took a turn for the worst. I also really liked it when the actors would draw out the Disney logo with their magic glowing wands. That was something I always wanted to do as a kid!
As far as movies go, I remember going to theaters to see the first Incredibles movie and also Finding Nemo. When Cars came out, my aunt and uncle took me and that was a really fun movie too. Honestly, going to see most Disney movies in theaters is fun. I truly feel honored to have been a kid at the time of the Wizards of Waverly Place movie, Princess Protection Program, Lemonade Mouth, Camp Rock and its second movie, The Hannah Montana Movie, the High School Musical movies, The Cheetah Girls (Dorinda was my favorite), Princess Diaries, and so many more. I also enjoyed all of the Disney princesses and their movies, Mary Poppins, Robin Hood, The Fox and the Hound, The Aristocats, Tarzan, Lilo and Stitch, Treasure Island, Fantasia, and Peter Pan. Aside from Disney, I also loved several movies including: Thumbelina, Anastasia (after all that is my name!), the Bratz movies, and all of the Barbie movies. Yes, I absolutely LOVED Barbie. From The Princess and the Pauper to Swan Lake to Magic of the Pegasus and Barbie and the Diamond Castle I was all in. One year for Halloween, Allyson and I dressed up as Anneliese and Erika and that was pretty great. Kind of like Disney, it’s been sad to see the path the Barbie movies have gone. The animation is very different and the movies are all too flashy and artificial to me. It is what it is though, and I’m glad I got to see the movies I did.
Anneliese and Erika from Princess and the Pauper. This was definitely my favorite Barbie movie as a child. 🙂
Moving on from that block of a paragraph, I also remember having a blast with a variety of toys like Polly Pockets, Bratz, Zhu Zhu pets, Barbies, Webkinz, Littlest Pet Shop, Liv dolls, and frogs. Yes, frogs. You might ask, “What do you mean by that?” No worries, I got this. There’s a way you can fold index cards to make origami frogs. My sister and I made an actual village of these frogs. They all had names and some had kids and we had a very particular way of naming them and getting them married. We were weird about our frogs. Oh boy. Liv Dolls were a brand of dolls that you could take the hair off and give them new hair and they were really pretty but very short lived. I think there were five of them named Sophia, Alexis, Katie, Daniela, and Hayden. They all had really pretty eyes and were really flexible dolls. It was disappointing when they stopped producing stuff for them.
I honestly think I can say that I lived through the golden age of Webkinz. That was back in the days when there weren’t deluxe memberships and all the stupid, colorful, and flashy plushies. I was a big Webkinz fan and I think I had about 80 of them. They all had beautiful rooms and I was SO dedicated to my Webkinz. I’ll never forget that Christmas when I got my first Webkinz, a chocolate lab, named Choco. Yes, I know I spelled it wrong but that’s how I spelled it as a seven-year old. I’m pretty sure I still have most of them in my basement too… Haha. On the topic Webkinz, which had the virtual pet world, I was reminded of Club Penguin. Club Penguin was a magical virtual world where you were a penguin and you could chat with others in real time and enjoy life as a penguin. Several times, my parents bought me the membership and that was when Courtney98 (my penguin) lived her best life. She had the best igloo and puffles (those were her pets) and cutest clothes. She was also a secret agent and tour guide for the island. Not too long ago, Club Penguin shut down for good and being the dork I am, I actually went back to Club Penguin to say goodbye to Courtney98 and a big part of my childhood. On that day we finally tipped the iceberg and it was great. If you played Club Penguin, you’ll know what I mean about the iceberg. 🙂 Another website I loved spending time on was Pixie Hollow. You could make your own fairy and have her travel around the world of Tinker Bell and that was pretty great too. Thinking about computer games, my sister and I also played games like Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, Zoombinis, Bella Sara, Poptropica, and on the Build-A-Bear website. Once again Barbie had a great website with good games, Girls Go Games was pretty great, and also the American Girl Doll website was a lot of fun. There was also this fun but really weird math game we played that involved monkeys and this group of kids trying to stop Mathra and bring back the goo. Hopefully, some of you have played this and know what I’m talking about. Unfortunately, we never finished the game because the disk had issues.
In addition to all of this, my sister and I spent soooo much time outside. We played pretend with our friends in my backyard or in the cul-de-sac I live in and it was a great time. We spent hours on end outside and I wouldn’t trade any amount of social media followers or power-ups in some silly game for that. We also played a variety of board games that kept us occupied that were very, very fun. There was this one Disney princess game that helped you get ready for a ball that was really fun. I always loved playing that and really any game involving princesses. I honestly feel like many of today’s little kids are occupied by their iPads and virtual game worlds. They’re focused more on making their game character successful and happy than actually enjoying the real world. Some middle school kids, I feel, are even more worried about being cool and technology than spending time in the real world, enjoying Mother Nature. I’m getting a little off topic here, but I just feel like kids need to spend more time being kids nowadays. They need to put down the iPad, get away from the TV, and enjoy childhood, just like I did.
Back on topic now! Not only did we play outside a lot, but we enjoyed reading a lot. The summer reading program at my local library was one of my favorite things to do. I loved the Wishbone series, Junie B. Jones, the Boxcar Children, some Nancy Drew, Harry Potter, Magic Tree House, Emily Windsnap, The Lightning Thief series, and the Twilight saga. I know I read many more books than what I’ve listed here and I think my love for reading then is what has allowed me to be the bookworm I am today. Books are great. 🙂
Finally, I’d like to talk about the music I listened to. As a kid, it was all about the Jonas brothers, the good version of Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, the Cheetah Girls, Jesse McCartney, David Archuleta, and several other amazing artists and singers. Radio Disney was where the good music was at. I remember being in the car with my parents and any time 1690 AM wasn’t on, I would ask for it to be. Taylor Swift was really good at that time too. Some of her music today is alright, but it’s just not what it used to be, in my opinion. I loved her work as a country artist and even in her early pop years, but now, no thanks. Vanessa Hudgens also came out with some really good music and there were several other people and groups that my sister and I really liked, like Ashley Tisdale, the Black Eyed Peas, Katy, Cher Lloyd, Shania Twain, Avril Lavigne, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, and Shakira. I really loved Shakira when I was younger, and I still do! According to my mom, I did a really good Shakira impression!
Well after all that writing, I hope you’re still reading! This was a fun trip down memory lane. I hope you all enjoyed it and for some of you, I hope this was a trip down memory lane as well! I’m really glad that I grew up in a world without as much technology as some of today’s young children. They’re missing out on all the fun! I remember when iPods came out for the first time. That was pretty cool. And now see where we are today! It’s crazy what technology has done for us and allowed for humankind to do. I hope you all have a good week! Thanks for reading! 🙂
Reading is a great way to pass time, escape into another world, educate yourself, and have fun with something. Over the course of this summer, I have read many good books that I recommend giving a try. Here are a few good summer reads.
These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner
“It’s a night like any other on board the Icarus. Then, catastrophe strikes: the massive luxury spaceliner is yanked out of hyperspace and plummets into the nearest planet. Lilac LaRoux and Tarver Merendsen survive. And they seem to be alone. Lilac is the daughter of the richest man in the universe. Tarver comes from nothing, a young war hero who learned long ago that girls like Lilac are more trouble than they’re worth. But with only each other to rely on, Lilac and Tarver must work together, making a tortuous journey across the eerie, deserted terrain to seek help.” (Summary by Amazon)
The first book of the Starbound trilogy, These Broken Stars was an intriguing and enjoyable book to read. The plot had several twists and turns that were unexpected but made the book as good as it was. Lilac and Tarver were relatable characters and their growing romance helped make the story more interesting. It was great to follow the adventure of the two survivors and uncover the dark mysteries and secrets of the LaRoux companies and the strange planet the Icarus crashed on.
The Crown by Kiera Cass
“Kiera Cass’s #1 New York Times bestselling Selection series has captured the hearts of readers from its very first page. Now the end of the journey is here. Prepare to be swept off your feet by The Crown—the eagerly awaited, wonderfully romantic fifth and final book in the Selection series. In The Heir, a new era dawned in the world of The Selection. Twenty years have passed since America Singer and Prince Maxon fell in love, and their daughter is the first princess to hold a Selection of her own. Eadlyn didn’t think she would find a real partner among the Selection’s thirty-five suitors, let alone true love. But sometimes the heart has a way of surprising you…and now Eadlyn must make a choice that feels more difficult—and more important—than she ever expected.” (Summary by Amazon)
The Selection series has to be my all time favorite series because of the amazing characters, love story, setting, and storyline. This book was beautifully written, romantic, and dramatic. It was too easy to get lost in the world of Illea and I was sad to see that series come to an end. While the ending of the book wasn’t quite what I had hoped it would be, I still enjoyed it and was glad to see Eadlyn and the rest of her family and friends live happily ever after. It’s so hard not to spoil anything for those of you who haven’t read it yet!
Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard
“Mare Barrow’s world is divided by blood—those with common, Red blood serve the Silver-blooded elite, who are gifted with superhuman abilities. Mare is a Red, scraping by as a thief in a poor, rural village, until a twist of fate throws her in front of the Silver court. There, before the king, princes, and all the nobles, she discovers she has an ability of her own. To cover up this impossibility, the king forces her to play the role of a lost Silver princess, and betroths her to one of his own sons. As Mare is drawn further into the Silver world, she risks everything and uses her new position to help the Scarlet Guard—a growing Red rebellion—even as her heart tugs her in an impossible direction. One wrong move can lead to her death, but in the dangerous game she plays the only certainty is betrayal. This sweeping story of palace intrigue, class hierarchy, and deception will keep readers hurtling along, desperate to find out Mare’s fate. Her honesty and determination, quick wit, and no-holds-barred attitude will surely make readers fall in love with her. “(Summary by Amazon)
I’ve never written a review for a book I haven’t finished yet, but this book has been so unique, exciting, and worth the long wait at the library that I feel comfortable doing so. The world and general idea of this story are similar to a lot of fiction, young-adult books I’ve read, but it has been interesting to learn more about Mare and follow her story of the transformation from her life as a Red to her new, dangerous, and somewhat exciting life as a “lost Silver princess”. I can’t wait to see what’s in store for Mare and I look forward to reading the next book in the series.
So here’s a few books that I’ve found enjoyable to read this summer. If you haven’t read these books yet, I suggest giving them a try. Reading can be a lot of fun and it’s a wonderful way to sit back, relax, and pass some time. Happy reading!
Across the Universe by Beth Revis is a sci-fi, young adult novel that was originally published on November 29, 2011 by Penguin Group. It is the first book of the Across the Universe trilogy.
Amy is a cryogenically frozen passenger aboard the spaceship Godspeed. She has left her boyfriend, friends–and planet–behind to join her parents as a member of Project Ark Ship. Amy and her parents believe they will wake on a new planet, Centauri-Earth, three hundred years in the future. But fifty years before Godspeed’s scheduled landing, cryo chamber 42 is mysteriously unplugged, and Amy is violently woken from her frozen slumber.
Someone tried to murder her.
Now, Amy is caught inside an enclosed world where nothing makes sense. Godspeed’s 2,312 passengers have forfeited all control to Eldest, a tyrannical and frightening leader. And Elder, Eldest’s rebellious teenage heir, is both fascinated with Amy and eager to discover whether he has what it takes to lead. Amy desperately wants to trust Elder. But should she put her faith in a boy who has never seen life outside the ship’s cold metal walls? All Amy knows is that she and Elder must race to unlock Godspeed’s hidden secrets before whoever woke her tries to kill again. (Review from Amazon)
Across the Universe was a very unique and thrilling read. Revis did a wonderful job portraying the emotions and thoughts of Amy, the main character. It was easy to understand how Amy felt and more interesting to visualize what she was experiencing on the Godspeed. The love story between Amy and Elder was cute to follow along with. I found the ending to be rather dramatic and somewhat disturbing, but other than that the book was enjoyable. I look forward to reading the second and third book of the series and can’t wait to see what happens next with Amy and Elder. I recommend this book to those who are fans of the Galahad series, Battlestar Gallactica, Prometheus, as well as Ender’s Game.
